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“Will you also give me an opportunity to throw?” I asked, surprising myself with my forwardness. “I have my own knives.”
“Throw?” he asked. “In the act? I don’t need a young upstart tripping over his own feet and skewering the audience.”
“I don’t trip, and I hit the target,” I snapped. “I would ask you to see me throw before you make judgments.”
Mr. Rose shrugged. “All right, maybe we’ll talk about me
watching you throw sometime, boy,” he said. “Right now I’m busy.”
“Isn’t there a show this afternoon?” I asked.
“I’ve given myself a holiday,” he answered. “I’ll be in the evening show, however. You may as well watch then, so you’ll be prepared when we rehearse tomorrow. Now, go gawk or something.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said to his dubious offer, but he didn’t reply; he just sat at the table and shuffled his cards.
I found my way to the cookhouse and was first in line when lunch was announced. I could barely keep my eyes open to watch the performers returning from the parade. Since I didn’t have an obligation until the evening show, I decided to try out my new bunk. Seconds after removing my jacket and shoes I was fast asleep.
I was in a huge stone room, the ceiling held up by bulbous painted columns. One side was open to water, palms, and sky. I was amid a crowd of dark-skinned people wrapped in slight linens who surrounded a circle of girls in the middle of the room. The girls displayed more jewelry than clothes. Some played harps and double-horned pipes, others sang a melodious and repetitive refrain and beat wands in time. My gaze would have lingered upon them if it had not been stolen away by the dancer I recognized in their center, a voluptuous, undulating, dark-haired beauty.
She swayed her hips, her face ecstatic. She turned, she writhed, she twirled; she stomped out the rhythm with her feet; she cried a victory to the skies. Faster and faster she whirled. The music rose to a crescendo, then ended with a crash.
Silence.
The dancer stood, arms raised above her head, her chest heaving, her eyes on me. The crowd disappeared. The distance between us telescoped impossibly, and she was right in front of me.
“You are coming,” she said joyously.
I woke up, and a trace of responding joy still clung to me.
I shook my head. I fell asleep thinking of attending a show, and I got a show, I thought with amusement. I climbed from my bunk and set off to watch the circus.
I took my seat, facing the center ring. The air was close and warm under the big top and thick with the smell of sawdust. I removed my jacket and laid it across my lap. While I ate the frankfurter I had purchased outside for an exorbitant price, I examined the scaffolding, the wires made ready for the aerialists, and the electric lights strung between quarter poles high underneath the canvas. The excited audience hummed like the generator that no doubt powered the lights. There had to be thousands more here than could have fit in our theater at home, but the three rings, and the oval track of the hippodrome that ran around them, guaranteed everyone a good view.
Home. I had avoided thoughts of home up until now. Were they looking for me there? I wondered. Or did they assume I would show up when good and ready?
A brassy fanfare sounded.
Through the curtains came the band, playing a rousing overture to lead the grand entry. A squadron of performers on horseback followed, welcomed by thunderous applause. Behind the equestrians acrobats tumbled and leaped; next came a pair of camels ridden by the brothers I had met earlier, then men in tights, aerialists perhaps, shadowed by a fleet of bicyclists. On and on marched the performers around the hippodrome track, grouped by the color of their clothes or the items they juggled or the banners they carried, while a motley array of clowns in striped stockings dashed here and there, throwing confetti and hitting one another with oversize pillows.
This was a very different show from the one I had left. How perfect in form all the participants were. Nothing less beautiful than a tubby clown graced the arena. All limbs were present, all flesh firm, and the costumes were cut to display this pulchritude. A man could become dizzy with the display of legs. No wonder the audience teemed with awestruck men. Ah, but those men hadn’t been graced with dreams like mine. I smiled.
As the elephants came into the tent, the front of the parade completed the circuit, and the whole show met in a glittering circle of wonder. At the last moment the band peeled off and took seats on the bandstand to play the rest of the parade out, then the equestrian director, a strapping man in top hat and red coat, strode into the center ring, and the band hit their final chord and fell silent.
The equestrian director blew a blast on his silver whistle. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he began to the hushed crowd. “Welcome to our scintillating cavalcade of marvels, acrobats, and wild beasts.” The broadsheet I had been given as I entered identified the master of the ring as Mr. Geoffrey Marvel, one of the three brothers who owned the circus. He was a more mature version of the young man in the business office and had a walrus mustache.
“Derring-doers from every corner of the globe are gathered here to thrill you,” he boomed. “Children, may you laugh with the antics of our beloved animals and clowns. Ladies, let your hearts flutter for the handsome strong men who will risk their lives to entertain you. And gentlemen, we bring you pretty and accomplished girls aplenty.” This last was received with laughter and applause. “Now, to begin our program, I present to you, straight from the court of the emperor of Japan, where their family has entertained for five hundred years, those amazing Asian artistes, those Nippon nimbles, the Rising Sun Jugglers!”
The audience burst into applause as the band played an Oriental tune.
Such an astounding array of animals, aerial acts, ground acts, and thrillers followed that even I, a seasoned hand, sat amazed. Sometimes the performers used one ring while the others were set up for the next acts; sometimes all rings were in use at the same time. The knife thrower, Mr. Rose, dapper now in a suit with his waxed mustache symmetrical, competed for attention with a team of jugglers and some acrobats. I judged his throwing not as accomplished as that of my uncle Jack, but perhaps his act was more exciting when he had an assistant.
As they had ended the parade, the elephants also ended the show. I clapped as hard as anybody as all twenty pachyderms exited on their hind legs, each, except the leader, with its huge feet on the back of the elephant in front.
I hurried out the back door as soon as the show ended, eager to meet and congratulate my new compatriots. I would have introduced myself to Mr. Geoffrey Marvel first, but he was conversing with a gesticulating man.
“It’s not one of my monkeys,” the man bellowed. “Mine are all accounted for. Blame this on someone else.”
I was pleased to see one of the trick riders, a handsome brunette woman who had bewitched me with her exquisite figure as much as her skill. She held a horse’s bridle while a blacksmith inspected a horseshoe. This was no dream but a real beauty. I decided to make my first conquest and grinned as I walked toward her.
